Library Stuff

“The Kansas State Library has launched a social-media campaign against what it says are unfair practices to keep bestselling electronic books out of the hands of libraries and their patrons. Library officials have started a page on Facebook, “bringing attention to the titles publishers are refusing to sell (as) e-books to libraries, price gouging or limiting checkouts per copy purchased.”

via KansasCity.com

EFF – “Once upon a time, Facebook could be used simply to share your interests and information with a select small community of your own choosing. As Facebook’s privacy policy once promised, “No personal information that you submit to Facebook will be available to any user of the Web Site who does not belong to at least one of the groups specified by you in your privacy settings.” How times have changed.”

ComputerWorld – “If proposed changes to the Facebook Privacy Policy go through next month the social network will store financial account information you use to make purchases on its site unless you tell it not to.”

Telegraph – “Children as young as eight have Facebook pages and use other social media websites, ignoring the age restrictions, according to an official report.”

High Point University News – ” In the old days, a card catalog and a microfilm reader were considered high-tech in terms of tools in the library, but students today need much, much more – and thanks to ever-growing services in the High Point University libraries, students have everything they need and more. Case in point? The library is on Facebook, and students can literally be in touch with the library all day, every day – a feature that’s new this semester.”

Jerusalem Post – “Haredi women are turning to the Internet to build their businesses, which is raising questions about the “kosher” use of social-media tools. “Today you can’t run a business without the usage of a computer and the Internet world,” Rebbetzin Holly Pavlov, founder and director of She’arim College of Jewish Studies for Women in Jerusalem, said Wednesday. “Social media is part of marketing and branding, but it opens an array of dangers.”

Courthouse News – “A judge is weighing whether Facebook’s right to privacy trumps a man’s rights to discovery for his defense in a criminal trial. At issue is a motion from the attorney for former St. Louis City police Officer Bryan Pour, who authorities say used his department-issued pistol to shoot Jeffrey Bladdick in a bar parking lot. The motion seeks disclosure from Facebook of 23 individual user profiles and the actions of a Facebook group called “Jeff Bladdick is a bulletproof badass” going back to the day before the Nov. 9, 2008 incident.”

Top Tech News – “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says privacy is no longer a “social norm.” Casting himself as a prophet and ignoring Facebook’s privacy battles, Zuckerberg boasted that Facebook anticipated users would want to share info. Zuckerberg told the Crunchies that “we decided these would be the social norms now and we just went for it.”

Daily Kos – “The next time you log onto Facebook, you’ll be thinking about privacy: how private are your photos, friends, status updates, and personal details, and how public do you actually want them to be?”

Telegraph – “Two very different worlds collide this week when web-savvy executives of Google, Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia meet representatives of the Vatican to explain the mysteries of the internet.”